-11/28- Tuesday morning
"Fuck." thought Kasi as she waited in line again at the pharmacy the next morning. As if it wasn't bad enough that she had once again forgotten her laptop. Now she had to buy yet another morning-after pill and of course Barbara was the one once again standing at the window of the pharmacy.
When she was last here Kasi had been forced to repeat her request louder and louder until Barbara understood what she wanted. She spoke so loud the last time that the people behind her in line had heard. Kasi cringed remembering how embarrassed she was. "That old bat really needed to get her hearing checked." Kasi thought.
Thankfully Kasi had her book bag with her. She quickly took out a pen and wrote her request for a Plan B pill on a post-it. When reached the front of the line she presented it to Barbara. The older woman held the note up at arm's length and squinted through her glasses down the bridge of her nose.
"Let's see. You want a morning-after pill?" asked Barbara out loud.
Kasi stared at her in disbelief. "How does this lady even have a job here?" She thought.
Barbara looked from the post-it to Kasi and said equally as loud "Didn't I just get you one of those the other day?"
It was a rhetorical question as Barbara stepped away right after she said it. Kasi's cheeks burned as she felt like everyone was staring at her.
When Barbara returned with the pill to finalize the transaction she suggested Kasi consider going on birth control. Telling her that they sold it over the counter now and a prescription wasn't required. Not at all subtle, she slipped a pamphlet about safe sex into the bag before handing Kasi her bag.
"Well, great. She and everyone else in this store thinks I'm a slut too." Thought Kasi.
-
Kasi had been thinking all morning of the best plan to get her laptop back from Sean. She was afraid however that she wouldn't be able to control herself if she was alone with him. She knew he wouldn't make it easy.
In the end she figured that the safest thing to do was to simply give up the laptop and remote wipe it. It sucked because it was brand new, but she knew her parents would let her order another one and she had all her stuff backed up to the cloud. In the meantime she would make do with a notebook and pen.
Kasi knew she still had to prepare for the debate with Sean though. At least it wasn't expected to rain this week. The library wouldn't be as crowded and she could meet Sean there. So, trying to take charge of the situation she texted Sean and told him to meet her at the library the next afternoon.
Kasi half expected Sean to argue with her about meeting at the library or make some other sort of excuse to return to his dorm room. Surprisingly he didn't. He only asked to instead meet later at 7pm because he had another class that afternoon. It wasn't an unreasonable ask so Kasi agreed.
-11/29- Wednesday evening
Kasi was a punctual sort of person and got to the library at around 6:45pm. She found a table and pulled out the laptop that she had borrowed from her roommate, Alexis, and texted Sean to let him know where she was sitting.
By 7:15 Sean hadn't arrived and Kasi texted him to ask where he was. He clearly saw her texts, but had opted to leave her on read. After almost another half an hour passed Kasi was frustrated and about to leave, but then she saw Sean waddling over toward her table. She tried to quickly make herself seem like she wasn't at all bothered by his lateness. By the time he reached her she was the picture of calm, poised composure.
The first thing he did was point at the laptop in front of Kasi and say "that's a bit of a downgrade isn't it?"
He was right. It was a basic Chromebook. It couldn't have cost more than two hundred dollars. The laptop Kasi had left behind in Sean's room had been a MacBook Pro that cost ten times that.
"It's my roommates. I'm just borrowing it until my new one gets delivered." Kasi explained.
"You don't want your old laptop back? We can go back to my room and get it." Sean said.
Not falling for it Kasi said "Oh, you can keep it. It was old anyway." in a patronizing tone. She felt very superior being able to subvert his plans by casually throwing cash around like it didn't matter.
Annoyingly her words didn't seem to make Sean feel inferior at all as he simply shrugged it off.
Things got rather boring at this point as they actually worked on preparing their arguments for the debate. Kasi for the most part let Sean take the reins. If he wanted to do all the work she thought she might as well let him. His thoughts on the subject were honestly disgusting from a feminist point of view, but at this point she didn't care. Everyone in her philosophy class knew she hadn't picked the anti abortion side or Sean as a partner.
After approximately two hours they both agreed that they had made enough progress to call it a night. Kasi began to pack up while Sean continued to look at his laptop. She awkwardly said "bye." as she stood up to leave.
"Wait a second," said Sean "I want to show you something."
Kasi assumed it was something else to do with their assignment, so she lowered back down to her seat. Sean pressed play and turned his laptop to face her.
It was a video of Kasi and Sean. More descriptively it was a video of Kasi on top of Sean bouncing like a deranged pervert, completely in the nude, practically crying out "I love your dick." over and over again.
Kasi felt like her heart had stopped.
"You recorded us." she said quietly before suddenly looking around alarmed. Thankfully most of the other students had already left for the night. Kasi relaxed a little when she realized there was no one else in their immediate vicinity that could see or hear the video.
She felt angry when she turned her head back and saw Sean slouching in his seat looking rather pleased with himself. No, Kasi thought. She wouldn't let him use this against her. She could still have the high ground. Still be in control, she thought.
"You could get in a lot of trouble for filming me without my consent. It's illegal. I could even have you arrested." Kasi said confidently, calling his bluff.
"That's the best part," said Sean. "I didn't record us. You did."
Kasi's confidence wavered.
"This recording," Sean continued "came from your laptop and was sent to me from your email."
So the remote computer wipe didn't work or she had taken too long to do it. Sean had obviously been prepared with this plan the last time she went to his room. That was before Kasi had decided to give up on getting her laptop back. She remembered now that her laptop had been sitting open on his desk the last time she was in his room.
"You left a pretty nasty message in the email too." Sean grinned "Something about threatening to post it online to get back at me for breaking up with you."
Kasi realized then that she had lost. She wasn't in control. She wasn't in control at all.